


The Divine Injustice

by Cranberries (Winchester_Werewolf)



Category: The Divine Wind - Garry Disher
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Canon Compliant, F/M, Mitsy is not the only girl in Broome, POV First Person, so salty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 09:39:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4824086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchester_Werewolf/pseuds/Cranberries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My mother used to say it was fitting that Hartley had fallen in love with an uppity woman exactly like his mother."</p><p>Mitsy and Hartley's toxic relationship as viewed by an anonymous and bitter nurse, of Greek descent, who worked alongside Mitsy Sennosuke in 1941, in the aftermath of the cyclone that killed Imazuki Sennosuke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Divine Injustice

Broome had a certain kind of flavour during the Wet. Something that put a tang in the breeze, a metallic scent in the rain. When I woke early that morning to the screaming of lorikeets, I knew that day would not be normal.

Storms were volatile, violent, and merciless. Broome was both born from its storms and made from it. My own father had disappeared with fierce wind and rain years before; and my youngest brother before him, swallowed by the wrathful sea.

But Broome endured and Broome continued on, as only an isolated town could. The cyclone of 1941 was no different to any other cyclone. Many lives were spared beneath creaking wooden houses, but many were also lost to Poseidon. My grandmother had once said that Broome was battered by cyclones because Poseidon was angry at us for stealing his beautiful pearls.

By this time, I had been working full-time at Broome’s miniscule hospital. I mostly looked after young children who got their little fingers stuck with their fathers’ fishing hooks, but the days after the cyclone caused an influx of patients. Old women with burns from fallen hot stoves, scrapes and scratches and bruises from being thrown around by the gusting winds, half drowned sailors pulled from the shores.

So many sailors, fishermen, and pearlers died in that small hospital. Water in the lungs, internal bleeding from decompression sickness, dehydration, sun exposure. Some brought the drowned who were still living, but their brains so damaged from lack of oxygen it was pointless. I had learnt early on that the only thing you could do was the best you could, but death was always there and death would come when it pleased. Even to the ones you knew.

Some faces were familiar that first day, a couple of Japanese pearl divers were recovering from dehydration. I remembered them best because their wives regularly dragged them in by their ears, their backs red and weeping from severe sunburn.

Amongst the unfamiliar faces there was one I hadn’t expected to see those days after the cyclone. I remembered him from school. Hartley Penrose had always been the fussy boy at the back of the room, secular and self-pitying. His father owned the chandlery shop, and they lived in a grand house in the nicer part of Broome. Pearlers to their core.

Poseidon had not been kind to Hartley Penrose. And right that he deserved it. No man in their right mind thought going out on tumultuous seas was a good idea, no matter how  many pearls were beneath the waves. Hartley had always been a bitter boy, like he had sucked on a lemon as a baby and never spat it out. A boy who only had eyes for those who could offer him something in return, for a friendship not worth giving.

Although I was on the ward he resided, I did my littlest to help him. I left him to a nurse who could deal with him better than I. The whininess had stayed with him through childhood, and I did not deal well with whingers. Lest of all the whininess of a person I held little sympathy for to begin with. Matron Lorraine had muttered something about sour grapes, but I pretended not to hear her.

Of course, it was only natural Mitsy took Hartley. Mitsy Sennosuke. The Pearl of Broome, she fancied herself. Always doing as she pleased, damn the consequences of her actions. Hartley had always been infatuated with her, a girl he could never marry to begin with. The Japanese daughter of Hartley’s father’s underpaid workmen. It was almost typical; a great yankee ‘romance’ played at the tin theatre on Sheba Lane. Why, Mitsy was the Cinderella of Broome wasn’t she?

During our younger years, Mitsy had played the schoolyard boys off on each other. Hartley Penrose always in the middle of it. Who could win her attention? Who could keep that silly little cow entertained long enough to give Mitsy the attention she so desired? Every time it was Hartley Penrose, the scrappy little blighter. On the occasions Jamie Killian had won, it was like something meaner grew bigger and bigger in Hartley’s heart. My mother used to say it was fitting that Hartley had fallen in love with an uppity woman exactly like his mother.

I loathed them both. I watched Mitsy help the beastly boy walk on a butchered leg. The _vastus lateralis_ muscle in Hartley’s thigh had been torn straight down the middle; it would never be the same. He would never walk like a normal person again. Runner-up most eligible Bachelor of Broome was now not so. Who would marry a cripple? Especially a cripple whose father was selling their family’s pearling luggers, throwing their wealth away to the breeze like only a wealthy family could.

One couldn’t help but wonder why Mitsy was helping the son of the man responsible for her father’s death. Childhood friends aside, they were two people who had no real business liking one another. Call it my own opinion, but Mitsy was an emotional succubus. A siren waiting out on the shore to drown unsuspecting boys. It was like watching a tick on a dog; Mitsy feeding off of Hartley’s guilt.

I wondered darkly who would kill each other first. Michael Penrose had killed Imazaki Sennosuke; surely the pattern would be repeated. Hopefully in a spectacular manner, they were not ones to do things by halves.

Those two were a toxic mix. They were like water and oil, chalk and cheese. In the blistering humidity of the hospital, I hoped they _destroyed_ one another.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a school assignment. 
> 
> I found The Divine Wind incredibly bland and unspectacular, and the main characters were all largely unlikable. Thought I'd upload it anyway; just to show people how deeply unspectacular and kind of creepy Hartley and Mitsy truly are. 
> 
> The Nurse is so freaking salty and I don't even care.


End file.
